Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/848

824 leading to the earlier association, while his brother William became strongly identified with the later steps that merged it in the wider organization which has now existed for half a century. For eight years the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists met as such, and then in 1848, in the city of Philadelphia, the new association, under its present name and with nearly its present constitution, took its place. William B. Rogers, the retiring president of the earlier body, turned over the chair to Dr. W. C. Redfield, of New York, the first presiding officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Six members of this first meeting are still living, two of them in Greater New York: these are Dr. Boyé, already named as the sole survivor of the founders of the previous association; Prof. Wolcott Gibbs, of Newport; E. I., the retiring president at the recent meeting; S. L. Abbott, of Boston, and Epes S. Dixwell, of Cambridge; and the two New York members. Prof. Oliver P. Hubbard, of Manhattan, long and actively connected with the New York Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Charles E. West, of Brooklyn, the veteran educator, student, and public-spirited citizen.

In reference to the place of holding the jubilee meeting in the present year, Boston and Philadelphia both had claims to the honor. It was decided in favor of the former, however, as the real birthplace of the association; because, although the first regular meeting was held in Philadelphia in 1848, yet the body was organized and its constitution adopted in Boston at the last meeting of the previous association, in 1847. Strictly, perhaps, the celebration of the semicentennial was due Philadelphia, but there does not appear to have been any other than friendly rivalry in the case; Boston was enthusiastic for it, and Philadelphia consented, and through her representative. Dr. Daniel G. Brinton, the well-known anthropologist and ex-president of the association, expressed her warm and earnest congratulations.

The arrangements for the meeting had been planned on a scale of elegant and even elaborate hospitality on the part of the city and all its institutions of science and education. Regret was expressed to the writer by a leading member of the local committee that, at the season when the Association met, so many of the wealthy and cultured citizens were absent and their houses closed that there was far less of elegant private hospitality than would have been gladly offered at a different time of the year. But this fact was really not a matter for regret, as the time of the association was so absolutely filled up with work and with the abounding courtesies and invitations from the city and its institutions that every hour during the week was crowded. One day was spent amid the classic precincts of Harvard University, and another at historic Salem; one evening reception at